You were at the psychologist’s office because of the bad dreams you’d been having. Dreams that you’d killed a girl when you were in high school. Normally you’d write such dreams off as nightmares, but though you know you didn’t have anything to do with it, this girl actually disappeared. “Please sweet Jesus bring our little girl back to us,” you remember her mom saying on national television as you studied for your AP finals.

“I’m ready to see you now,” Dr. Heston says, ushering you into her office. You spill your guts to her, telling her about your nightmares, how the girl disappeared and eventually her stepfather was found guilty of her disappearance, but how you kept having dreams that you killed her. “In the dreams it’s the middle of the night and I wake up for no reason,” you say. “I’m just an observer, and my body moves on its own. I get out, walk out the back door, walk to her house, and sneak in her window”–this is when you start crying–“I, I smother her, and then take her to my back yard and bury her. That’s when I wake up.”

Though initially alarmed about your revelations, on your next visit Dr. Heston says “I looked up the case, and it’s clear her stepfather did it. He confessed both to a fellow inmate and then later in court. I think you have unresolved childhood issues that need to be dealt with, though. I propose we go to your parents’ yard and dig where you think you buried her in your dreams. When you see that there’s nothing there perhaps this deranged illusion will leave your mind.” Though you think she was a bit wordy, you agree. As you work swings, you meet her there the next night at 10pm, about an hour after your parents hit the hay. “Go on, dig,” she says, handing you a shiny new shovel that she must have bought just for the occasion.

When you uncover the skull, she has just enough time to gasp and turn to run before you hit her in the temple full on with the spade-end of the shovel. While you push her now lifeless body into the hole on top of the skull you start to weep, but a moment later you start laughing as you realize you’ll just forget about this too. After all–you’ve done it before.